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CHALLENGES IN INTEGRATING BIM INTO CONSTRUCTION SAFETY

MANAGEMENT

Article in Proceedings of International Structural Engineering and Construction · August 2023

DOI: 10.14455/ISEC.2023.10(1).CON-40

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 Proceedings of International Structural Engineering and Construction, 10(1), 2023
Innovative Theory and Practices in Structural Engineering and Construction
Edited by Karatas, A., Iranmanesh, A., Gurgun, A., Yazdani, S., and Singh, A.
Copyright © 2023 ISEC Press
ISSN: 2644-108X
www.doi.org/10.14455/ISEC.2023.10(1).CON-40

CHALLENGES IN INTEGRATING BIM INTO

CONSTRUCTION SAFETY MANAGEMENT
ELLEN PINIANO and MITSUYASU IWANAMI
Dept of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Tokyo Institute of Technology, Tokyo, Japan

While studies depict Building Information Modeling (BIM) as a technological

innovation with a high potential for construction hazard identification and safety
implementation, challenges arise due to different understandings and strategies in
utilizing BIM among organizations and professionals. This paper reflects on the
challenges of integrating BIM for construction safety systems through a statistical survey
analysis about the status of BIM integration for construction safety management. The
survey results gathered from 208 respondents were analyzed the aid of the R
programming language. The findings highlighted the difficulties encountered by
professionals with experience in using BIM for construction safety mitigation, who work
in various countries, different company classifications, job roles, and the number of years
of work experience. Furthermore, the survey identified the need for knowledge on using
BIM software, and digital data management and needing more experts and references
among the challenges in applying BIM in construction safety planning and
implementation. Fewer respondents used automation tools and referenced safety
standard regulations in BIM to identify hazards and plan construction safety layouts.
Thus, this study provides a helpful reference for future research, particularly in
developing frameworks and automation processes that enhance construction safety
through BIM applications. In conclusion, it is imperative to address the challenges in
integrating BIM into construction safety management to successfully utilize the
technology to promote safety and health in the construction industry.
Keywords: Building Information Modeling (BIM), Statistical analysis, R programming,
Survey.

1 INTRODUCTION
Construction sites are frequently dangerous because they involve diverse workers from various
organizations collaborating for a prolonged period. As a result, the public and private sectors are
turning to digital solutions to organize and coordinate the numerous tasks and work disciplines
necessary to promote safer and more sustainable construction. Accordingly, Aghimien et al.
(2018) affirmed that digitalization significantly impacts every project phase, opening up
possibilities for transformation and improved efficiency in the construction industry. Shafiq and
Afzal (2021), explored the potential of using Building Information Modelling (BIM) in improving
job site safety in the UAE. According to their report, the features of BIM enable virtual
visualization and effective simulation of actual job site conditions and interactively educate the
construction site crews to understand the job site conditions and safety requirements. However,
the maturity of the adoption of BIM differs in every country. Hence, national governance and
institutional frameworks influence BIM adoption (Edirisinghe et al. 2015). Hire et al. (2021)
criticized the use of BIM software in India, as it is more frequently used for drafting than

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Karatas, A., Iranmanesh, A., Gurgun, A., Yazdani, S., and Singh, A. (eds.)

construction projects and data management. Hence, Taat et al. (2022) presented a review of
previous literature on the barriers to adopting BIM for safety planning in Malaysia's construction
industry which identified as lack of in-house expertise, lack of training, and awareness of BIM,
lack of collaboration, client demand, unsure of government commitment to BIM, high cost of
software, lack of standardizing and resistance to change. This research aims to extend the previous
studies through an evaluation of the current status of the adoption and integration of BIM into
construction safety management in different countries in Asia focusing on Japan, the Philippines,
Thailand, China, Singapore, Myanmar, and Indonesia. It aims to give direction on the appropriate
approach in light of the barriers of integrating BIM in managing construction safety.

2 METHODOLOGY
A questionnaire sent to individuals from different countries who are engaged in construction
projects through social media platforms to assess the current status of BIM integration for
construction safety management. The survey inquired about the country of residence, company
classification, job roles, and the number of years of working experience. The first part of the survey
asks about BIM usage experience. The knowledge of BIM is evaluated among those without any
prior experience. The survey asked the BIM-experienced respondents about the difficulties that
are experienced in using BIM. The last part of the questionnaire solicited comments about BIM
and construction safety. Figure 1 shows the flow of the questions.

Figure 1. Design of survey questionnaire.

The respondents that are classified as follows:

• no experience in BIM (Non-BIM-Experienced)
• has experience in BIM but not applied to construction safety management (BIM Only)
• has experience in BIM and has applied to construction safety management (BIM + Safety)
This paper presents an analysis of the utilization of BIM and its integration into construction
safety management according to the background of respondents. The statistical survey treats the
responses on the country of residence, company classification, job role, and years of working
experience as categorical variables in the evaluation. Moreover, as the questionnaire is randomly
distributed, this study assumes a non-parametric method for analyzing the data from an unknown
population. This study employed the Chi-Square test of independence to establish the link between

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 Proceedings of International Structural Engineering and Construction, 10(1), 2023
Innovative Theory and Practices in Structural Engineering and Construction

categorical variables of the statistical test (McHugh 2013). The null hypothesis states that
background of respondents does not affect the utilization of BIM and integration into construction
safety. A significance level of 0.05 is considered a crucial value, and R programming functions
are used to compute Observed and Expected frequencies, Residuals, and the Chi-squared value.
Nonmetric Multidimensional Scaling (NMDS) technique was used to graphically summarize the
collected data regarding the integration of BIM across various countries, companies, job roles, and
years of experience. Since the survey questions were distributed randomly, and were in a yes or
no format, the most suitable method for analyzing the results was found to be NMDS method.
NMDS has been used to embed similarity and dissimilarity ratings from various sources. Thus, the
stress value is measured to evaluate the performance of the NMDS model, a lower stress value (0.1
to 0.2) indicates a better fit (Clarke 1996). Hence, this paper outlined the difficulties. The
responses were simply evaluated by taking the percentage of respondents who had experienced the
cited difficulties. Thus, the comments that were solicited were evaluated qualitatively.

3 RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS

A total of 208 responses were gathered from 17 countries. The evaluation focused on the Observed
Frequency (O) of respondents who have used BIM for construction safety management according
to categorical variables such as their country of residence, company classification, job role, and
years of working experience.

3.1 Adoption of BIM and Integration to Construction Safety Management

In Table 1, “BIM + Safety” refers to users of BIM into construction safety, while “BIM only” refers
to BIM-Experienced respondents who have not used BIM for construction safety. The Chi-Square
test of independence was regarded to determine how categorical variables are associated, and
validity of comparison. The Expected Frequency (E) is calculated to determine the validity of data
points for the statistical analysis as shown in Eq. (1). It is based on the Observed Frequency (O)
with the formula that takes into account the row total (MR), column total (MC), and total sample
size (n) from Table 1.
!R # !C
E= $
(1)

The difference between the Observed, O and Expected Frequency, E of each frequency cell is
called Residual. The larger the residual, the farther the correlation between the categorical variables
of the test. Subsequently, the formula for calculating Chi-Square is shown as in Eq. (2):
( (*&+)!
∑x%&' = +
(2)

X2i-j– also known as Pearson Chi-Square value of each cell in the table.
According to the assumption of the Chi-Square Test, the Expected Frequency for each cell in
the data table (Table 1) should not have a value of less than five (McHugh 2013). Regrettably,
responses from other countries had to be eliminated due to insufficient data to prevent sampling
errors or misrepresenting the target population by an insufficient number of samples. Subsequently,
this study limits the statistical analysis to the data points from China, Japan, the Philippines,
Singapore, and Thailand, where respondents have BIM experience. Referencing to the Chi-Square
test of Independence results, all categorical variables have p-values less than 0.05. Thus,
comparing responses in each category was treated as statistically significant.
Figure 2 shows the magnitudes of the corresponding residuals of the categories according to
Table 1. The blue and red circles under each column correspondingly represent the positive and

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Karatas, A., Iranmanesh, A., Gurgun, A., Yazdani, S., and Singh, A. (eds.)

negative residuals and associations with the categories “BIM only” and “BIM + Safety”. The
darker colors show higher evidence of contribution level to the respective categories. Evidently,
variables Japan and Contractor, Manager and Supervisor variables of the Job Role category, and
professionals with more than 15 years of working experience also showed positivity to the “BIM +
Safety” category.

Table 1. Chi-squared test of independence on the integration of BIM to construction safety.

Observed Freq., E Row Expected Freq., E Residuals

Categorical Variable BIM BIM+ sum, BIM BIM+ BIM BIM+
only Safety MR only Safety only Safety
I. Country
China 19 0 19 12.96 6.04 1.68 -2.46
Japan 23 23 46 31.38 14.62 -1.5 2.19
Philippines 16 6 22 15.01 6.99 0.26 -0.37
Singapore 6 2 8 5.46 2.54 0.23 -0.34
Thailand 9 3 12 8.19 3.81 0.28 -0.42
Sum of the column, MC 73 34 107 X2 = 19.11, df = 6, p-value = 0.003973
II. Company Classification
Academe 10 0 10 6.82 3.18 1.22 -1.78
Consultancy 29 3 32 21.83 10.17 1.53 -2.25
Contractor 28 31 59 40.25 18.75 -1.93 2.83
Owner/Developer/Government 6 0 6 4.09 1.91 0.94 -1.38
Sum of the column, MC 73 34 107 X2 = 21.75, df = 3, p-value 0.00007341
III. Job Role
Engineer/ Architect 54 13 67 45.71 21.29 1.23 -1.8
Manager 6 8 14 9.55 4.45 -1.15 1.68
Professor/Student/Researcher 9 0 9 6.14 2.86 1.15 -1.69
Supervisor 4 13 17 11.6 5.4 -2.23 3.27
Sum of the column, MC 73 34 107 X2 = 28.74, df = 3, p-value =0.000002535
IV. Number of Years of Work Experience
0-5 years 20 6 26 17.74 8.26 0.54 -0.79
5-10 years 24 7 31 21.15 9.85 0.58 -0.85
10-15 years 18 5 23 15.69 7.31 -1.73 2.53
>15 years 11 16 27 18.42 8.58 0.62 -0.91
Sum of the column, MC 73 34 107 X2 = 12.59, df = 3, p-value = 0.005605

Figure 2. Correlation plot of (a) Country, (b) Company Classification, (c) Job Role, and (d) Number of
years of Working Experience variables to the integration of BIM to construction safety.

The NMDS plot which was generated from R programming, shown in Figure 3 summarizes
the results of data points from verified respondents (the same data used in Chi-Square Test). This
visualization demonstrates the similarities between data sets that include categorical variables:

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 Proceedings of International Structural Engineering and Construction, 10(1), 2023
Innovative Theory and Practices in Structural Engineering and Construction

country, company classification, job position, and years of experience. The closer data points are
on the plot, the more similar those data points are in terms of the underlying data. Thus, the data
points from the variables Japan, Singapore, Supervisor, Contractor, Manager, and X.15 (15 years
of work experience) are close together and are inside the “BIM + Safety” category (green ellipse).
Meanwhile, the variables China, Consultancy, Engineer, Architect, and X.10.15 (10-15 years of
work experience) are closer and are inside the “BIM only” category (pink ellipse). The variables
Philippines, Myanmar, Thailand, Owner/Development/Government, Academe, and
Professor/Student/Researcher are enclosed in the Non-BIM-Experienced category. The stress
value of 0.168 indicates that the data points fit within the specified dimensions; thus, the data is
likely sufficient for interpretation.

Figure 3. NMDS plot of the survey responses on BIM adoption and integration in construction safety.

3.2 Challenges in Utilizing BIM for Construction Safety

Experienced BIM users were polled to gather data on difficulties on integrating construction safety
management. Figure 4a shows the difficulties and corresponding frequencies observed from the
responses to the survey. Most respondents stated that a lack of knowledge on utilizing BIM
software in strategizing a framework in BIM software is among the biggest difficulties in
integrating BIM into construction safety management. Secondly, respondents cited that managing
the model data size and file properties is crucial, and there needs to be more experts and references.
According to Figure 4b, 58% of the people surveyed used automation tools, while 54% followed
safety standards when using BIM for managing construction safety.

Figure 4a. Difficulties in using BIM for construction Figure 4b. Percentage of use of automation
safety management. tools and safety standard references.

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 Karatas, A., Iranmanesh, A., Gurgun, A., Yazdani, S., and Singh, A. (eds.)

3.3 Intake of Respondents about BIM and Integration to Construction Safety

The responses have been simplified according to different perspectives. According to the feedback
received, BIM was identified as the primary tool for Prevention through Design (PtD) to eliminate
construction hazards. Respondents recommended conducting more research and publishing
materials to enhance comprehension and awareness of the strategies and frameworks used for
hazard identification, safety layout planning, and visualization through BIM. Integrating BIM into
construction safety management poses challenges due to the need for more standardization in its
use, limited research and publication of frameworks, and the necessity for support from both the
government and private sectors to fully incorporate BIM into construction safety measures.

4 CONCLUSION
After surveying 208 people, 192 valid responses were analyzed statistically. The results show that
Asian developed countries such as Japan, Singapore, and China have a positive adoption rate of
BIM. However, the adoption of BIM in construction in developing countries like the Philippines,
Thailand, Myanmar, and Indonesia is still progressing. Of those who use BIM, approximately 30%
have experience integrating it into construction safety management. It is evident that the integration
of BIM into construction safety management has been significantly accepted among respondents
from Japan and Singapore, contractor companies, by professionals or specialists of managerial and
supervisory level, and of 15 years or more of working experience. After analyzing the feedback
from all the participants; it was found that BIM has the potential for enhancing construction safety
through design, but more research and standardization are needed to address integration challenges.
A comprehensive understanding and adoption of BIM in construction safety measures require the
support of both government and private sectors.

Acknowledgments
We extend our sincere gratitude to Prof. Chihiro Yoshimura of Tokyo Institute of Technology for his
invaluable guidance on the statistical analysis of our collected data. His insights and expertise played a vital
role in shaping the direction of this project.

References
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